Controlling predators can save the curlew

It’s unfashionable, but shooting a fox or catching a stoat is good for wading birds

Magnus Linklater

Wednesday March 31 2010, 1.01am, The Times

Magnus Linklater

Wednesday March 31 2010, 1.01am, The Times

The last two curlews came back to our strip of Perthshire moorland at the weekend, wheeling overhead with their mournful, fluting call, plunging their beaks into the mud, picking their way warily through the heather. They reminded us that spring has actually arrived after three months of non-stop snow. It was wonderful to see them again.

But the days when we regularly saw flocks of these wading birds are long gone. Their numbers have been steadily dwindling, and it will be touch and go whether the chicks produced by our remaining pair will survive the attentions of the predators who watch their nests every bit as keenly as we do. Alongside the curlew, equally vulnerable, is a lone lapwing (also known as a peewit), still